The Occupation of Bithynia and Pontus

Until mid-decade Roman military efforts in the East had been concentrated on Macedonia provincia , where no less than five legions were active, while four legions in Asia Minor guarded against Mithridates and performed police duties on the Lycian-Pamphylian coast and the routes over the Taurus. Every year since 78 there had been two consular armies in the East. Never had the Roman presence in the East been so massive and persistent. But events in the year 74 escalated Rome's involvement in Eastern parts far beyond even this level.

In that year Nicomedes IV, king of Bithynia, died.^[28] Nicomedes had named the Roman people as his heir, evidently in case of intestacy.^[29] Upon his death, the claims of a supposed son by his wife Nysa were asserted before the Senate, but certain Bithynians, who, Sallust notes, came of their own volition, denounced him as a fraud;^[30] it is clearly implied that a true heir would have blocked Roman inheritance. Nicomedes' reasons for leaving his kingdom to Rome in the absence of an heir are as obscure to us as those of Attalus III, but the guess may be ventured that since he recognized that the kingdom would pass from his line in any case, this seemed the only way to deter Mithridates from seizing it and to ensure that his tra-

ditional protector from Pontus, Rome, would determine its fate rather than his enemy.

The most recent precedents—Cyrene, inherited by the Roman people in 96 but apparently neglected for decades, and Egypt, which according to testamentary terms might have passed to Rome by now—show that the assumption of control by Rome at least in the near future was not by any means inevitable.^[31] Even the Attalid legacy was hardly accepted with alacrity, as we have seen. In 74, however, no hesitation to commit resources more deeply to the East is evident. Quite the reverse. No sooner was the question of Nicomedes' supposed son taken care of than the proconsul of Asia, M. Iunius Iuncus,^[32] was sent to establish the Roman presence in the former kingdom, while his quaestor, Q. Pompeius, oversaw the collection of the movable royal property and its transport to Rome, a process that was apparently completed by the time of Mithridates' invasion in the spring of 73.^[33] (Iuncus was already in Bithynia and, we may suppose, had his hands quite full with more pressing affairs when, probably in the winter of 74-73, an impertinent graduate student named C. Iulius Caesar appeared before him to demand the immediate punishment of some pirates he had rounded up.)^[34] As we shall see, Bithynia was made a consular province already in the course of 74.

Rome, then, moved with uncharacteristic speed and resolution to take up this royal inheritance. The circumstances that demanded such a firm response seem clear. Mithridates had remained a sufficient threat to require the maintenance in Asia Minor of a consular army of four or five legions since ca. 79. He had a history of meddling in Bithynia, while the news that arrived in Rome around this time of alliance with Sertorius was certainly ominous.^[35] The Pontic invasion of Bithynia, which indeed came within a year of Nicomedes' death, may well have been regarded as almost inevitable. The Senate seems to have been inclined to ensure that Bithynia's wealth would benefit Rome, whose resources were stretched to the limit around mid-decade, rather than Mithridates—hence the speed with which the royal possessions were laid hold of and spirited out of the country.^[36] Thus, although the war against Sertorius continued to drag on, dearly hampered by the demands of other theaters,^[37] and a consular army was operating in Macedonia, it was in Rome's interest to extend its commitments in Asia Minor in order to prevent Mithridates from growing much stronger.

Iuncus's occupation of Bithynia upon Nicomedes' death was only a temporary expedient, and war with Mithridates over the kingdom was dearly expected. Already in 74, when L. Octavius, consul in the previous year, suddenly died in his province of Cilicia, L. Licinius Lucullus, the current consul, eagerly sought and received that province and was given as well not only Asia provincia but also overall command of "the war against Mithridates." His colleague, the pompous and inept M. Aurelius Cotta, was likewise sent east with Bithynia as his province.^[38] As Cicero makes

clear in a speech delivered in 63, Lucullus was expected to make a pre-emptive strike against Mithridates from the south or southwest while Cotta held Bithynia.^[39] But Roman plans to seize the initiative were foiled by the aged but energetic king of Pontus, who chose to fight the war on his own terms by invading Bithynia at the opening of the campaigning season in the spring of 73, rather than await Lucullus's strike.

A problematic passage of Memnon of Heraclea may suggest that even before the consular armies appeared early in 73 Bithynia was flooded with publicani , for it seems to say that the Heracleans murdered the tax gatherers among them shortly after the arrival of Mithridates' fleet early in 73 and the Cyzicus campaign.^[40] This, if true, would be remarkable testimony to the eagerness with which the Romans laid hold of the revenues of Bithynia. However, Memnon probably implies nothing of the kind. It is impossible to suppose (as Memnon has been understood to say) that the publicani swept into Heraclea shortly after Mithridates' fleet had come through and the Romans in Bithynia were in full retreat! It seems fairly dear that Memnon, having mentioned the incident that brought to an end Heraclea's privileged status as free "ally and friend" of Rome (assistance to Mithridates' fleet in 73, despite alliance with Rome), simply moved forward in time in a short digression that traces the direct consequence of that act after the expulsion of Mithridates from Bithynia—the reduction of Heraclea to tributary status, the arrival of publicani , and their murder by the proud Heracleans. If this reading of the text is right, then it is not necessary to suppose that in the short time between Iuncus's occupation of the kingdom and Mithridates' invasion it was somehow decided just which Bithynian cities would pay tribute to Rome. Although some Bithynians at least had not viewed Rome's entry into the inheritance as a catastrophe for themselves, as the rejection of the alleged pretender's claims shows,^[41] others no doubt were favorable to Mithridates (Plut. Luc . 7.5), or at least hostile to Rome.

For our purposes a detailed narrative of the Third Mithridatic War is unnecessary.^[42] We need only observe the broad outline of Lucullus's recovery of Bithynia and conquest of Pontus, and to bring this campaign into relation with other contemporary Roman activities in the East.

Mithridates, bursting into Bithynia, took the Romans wholly by surprise. Having quickly blockaded Cotta in Chalcedon, he pushed on into the Roman province of Asia and laid siege to Cyzicus. By capturing Cyzicus Mithridates doubtless hoped to incite a general revolt against the Romans and repeat his successes of 89-88; but the stubborn resistance of its citizens and Lucullus's wise refusal to give battle drained the Pontic attack of its momentum.^[43] In the winter of 73-72 the besiegers became the besieged, and Mithridates attempted to move off but was heavily defeated on land and sea as he did so. Mithridates swiftly relinquished Bithynia and beat a retreat to Cabira in Pontus, where in 71 he was again defeated by Lucullus, to all appearances derisively. Mithridates abandoned his kingdom and fled for succor to his son-in-law, Tigranes of Armenia. By the end of 70 the last Pontic strongholds at Amisus, Sinope, Amasea, and Heraclea fell, and Mithridates' kingdom was entirely in Lucullus's hands. In 70, returning briefly to Asia provincia , Lucullus threw a great victory celebration at Ephesus for the felicitous conclusion of the war.^[44]

Lucullus, and we may suppose others, believed the war essentially over: only a bit of tough diplomacy (Lucullus's legate Ap. Claudius Pulcher was sent to Tigranes to demand Mithridates' extradition)^[45] or, failing that, military intimidation would be required to encourage Tigranes to hand over Mithridates for the triumph and a glorious conclusion to a stunning victory.^[46] It did not seem entirely premature for Lucullus now to inform the Senate of the victorious conclusion of the war, and for the Senate to respond with the appointment of a commission of ten senators to advise the

imperator in making the settlement.^[47] Lucullus's ostentatiously traditional procedure here contrasted sharply with that employed by Sulla in 85-84 and advertised symbolically not only the dominant position of the Senate in the post-Sullan regime but also the restoration of Roman power in the East (by this time, as we have seen, the war in Macedonia had reached an equally triumphant conclusion). His decision almost immediately thereafter (perhaps already in the winter of 70-69) to invade Armenia, after Ap. Claudius failed to induce Tigranes to hand over the king, eventually undid almost all he had achieved and brought personal humiliation. But at the time he surely expected that some strong arm-twisting would quickly produce the desired result and that his Armenian campaign would only provide a splendid coda to his work. He may have anticipated some criticism by passing along a rumor that the two kings were preparing to invade Asia (Plut. Luc . 23.7), but, like the identical assertion of Cicero in his speech of 66 (Leg. Man . 4, 7), this was a rhetorical point, hardly to be taken too seriously. Only with the benefit of hindsight could it be claimed that Lucullus had begun a major war without proper authority.^[48]